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An office worker leaves the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) headquarters in Hong Kong. The Banker magazine in the U.K. ranked it the world's most profitable bank this week. Two other Chinese state run banks top the list. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

The center of finance capitalism is still in London and New York. But since the 2008 crisis wiped out a number of major banks, like Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns to name a few, China's behemoth government owned banks have taken over the lion's share of global bank profits as measured by The Banker magazine.

Chinese banks took almost a third of total global bank profits in 2011, up from 4 percent in 2007, grabbing market share away from struggling European peers.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China topped the list as the most profitable bank for the second successive year, with pre-tax earnings of $43.2 billion, according to the magazine's list of top 1000 world banks. China Construction Bank followed, with a $34.8 billion profit. Bank of China came in third, with earnings of $26.8 billion.

"While European banks count the cost of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, China is leading the emerging markets into a new era of banking dominance. But the established markets of the US and Japan should not be forgotten," the magazine said.